Tom Lowe - The Black Bullet

Dan Grant stood fifteen feet away from the autopsy table and watched Dr. Julia Barnes cut through mummified human tissue and bones, the remains of Billy Lawson. Dan tried not to look at the face, half skeleton and half atrophied tissue resembling tawny leather stretched over exposed cheekbones.

Dr. Barnes examined the fresh MRI transparencies she had taken earlier of Billy Lawson’s body. “I see two objects that aren’t supposed to be there,” she said to Dan as the saw cut through rock-hard tissue, a chemical smell like moth balls in the puff of human dust. She stuck a gloved finger into a small hole in what was left of a concave stomach, similar to a collapsed tent draped over exposed ribbons. She said, “They used a lot of embalming fluid in 1945. I see one entrance wound to the abdomen … one in the chest … and one beneath the left armpit. Three shots and at least two bullets because here’s an exit wound.”

She used a tiny camera attached to a long prod, pushing though the dusty body cavity, her head glancing up at the flat plasma screen for reference.

“There,” she said, “see that?”

Dan stepped closer and looked at the color screen. Buried in the opaque honeycomb of cadaverous, emaciated body parts was a dark object smaller then the tip of his little finger. “Looks like a bullet,” he said.

Dr. Barnes used a long, tweezers-like prong to retrieve the object. Removing the piece of metal from the body, she held it in the light, her eyes studying it. She said, “It’s a bullet. But it’s a most peculiar one at that. It weighs more than most its size. And this is the first time I’ve ever removed a black bullet.”

O’Brien finished tying the Zodiac to the support near Jupiter’s stern when Nick Cronus approached. “I’ll get hot dog,” Nick said, Max’s reflection in his dark sunglasses.

“Thanks.” O’Brien got out of the dinghy and stepped up to the dock.

Nick lifted Max gently and set her on the dock. Immediately, she began stalking a lizard sunbathing on the side of a piling, throat extending like a cherry tomato.

“What’s wrapped in the wet towel?” Nick asked.

“Just got the Luger we left in one of your crab traps.”

“I didn’t leave it there, you did. Number A-111. I never pull up that trap again. I’m leavin’ it on the bottom of the river.”

“Why?”

“That Luger was on one of those skeletons. Now any crab that comes outta that trap is no good. You’ve heard of deviled crab, right?” Nick grinned.

O’Brien smiled. “Have you seen Dave?”

“He left a few minutes ago. A couple of FBI types walked out of Gibraltar, and none looked too happy, especially Dave.”

O’Brien was silent. He looked down the long dock toward the Tiki Bar. A pelican sailed across the dock alighting on the fly bridge of a Grand Banks trawler.

“Was Eric Hunter one of them?”

“Yeah. What are you gonna do with that gun?”

“Right now, I’m taking it with me in the shade, going inside Jupiter until Detective Dan Grant arrives, and that should be any minute. He called me and said they dug two bullets out of Billy Lawson’s body, a man who supposedly died from a single gunshot wound.”

Nick followed O’Brien and Max into Jupiter. “What does all this crazy stuff mean?”

“I don’t know.”

Jupiter moved. Max barked once running toward the cockpit. Detective Dan Grant knelt down to pet her. “Hello, little dog. You haven’t changed much.”

“Come in,” O’Brien said. “You remember Nick Cronus?”

“Of course,” Dan said, extending his hand. “Good to see you.”

“You, too.”

“Nick’s okay,” O’Brien said. “He found that damn U-boat with me. Whatever you can tell me about the autopsy, he can hear.”

Dan nodded. “Not much more to tell you than what I said on the phone. But I wanted to show you what the ME found. Lawson was hit in the chest, the gut, and one slug entered near his left armpit, lodging next to his heart.” He reached inside his sports coat pocket and took out a Ziploc bag with two dark objects in it. Dan stepped to the bar, opened the bag, and carefully set the bullets on the bar top.

“What the hell are those?” Nick asked.

“They’re two of the three bullets that killed Billy Lawson,” Dan said. “But they’re different from any bullets I’ve ever seen. Seems to be from a nine millimeter, but they’re heavy. Definitely not lead or brass. I’d like to see the gun that allegedly shot Lawson.”

O’Brien unfolded the damp towel, opened the holster and slowly removed the Luger, placing it next to the bullets. “Now you have it,” O’Brien said.

“Jesus Christ,” Dan said, letting out a low whistle. “Are you sure?”

“A Luger clip holds eight rounds. I’m betting that, when we remove this clip, we’ll see bullets that match with only four rounds left in the clip. Three used on Billy and one on the guy buried in the hole under the HEU canisters.” O’Brien put the bullets back in the Ziploc, folded the bag, and placed it in his pocket. “Thanks, Dan. Nick, can you keep an eye on Max for a couple of hours?”

“Sure. Where you gonna go?”

“To the man who can take this gun apart and put all the pieces back together again.”

O’Brien was less than half way to the Black Forest Gun Shop when Lauren called his cell. “It took some pretty deep digging,” she said, her voice upbeat, “but we found a couple of a.k.a. names for Yuri Volkow, not that two aliases have much bearing on what’s going on right now.”

“What do you have?”

“Yuri Volkow isn’t his real name, of course. We believe he’s Boris Borshnik, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in1951. He was educated at Moscow State University and did graduate work in theoretical physics at Oxford. He’s fluent in English, Chinese and German. He had a German passport, we discovered, that had his ID listed as Heimlich Schmidt. In Russia, he worked in a number of lower-level Kremlin jobs. He’s suspected of being a player in the hit on Alexander Litvineko. We’ve worked with Scotland Yard, MI-5 and SISMI in Italy.”

O’Brien was silent a moment. “Did this come from CIA files or FBI?”

“What difference does it make? You know everything I told you is classified anyway. Let’s say it’s a combination-all packaged from NSA. So why am I telling you? Maybe it’s because we have just under twenty-five hours to find these jerks before they have their insane version of a Sotheby’s auction. Maybe it has something to do with the fact we have two separate terrorists cells, mujahideen and Russian-probably within a few miles of one another. One has enough weapons-grade uranium to make a bomb. The other thinks it has a legitimate reason to do so.”

“Who’d you consult, Lauren? I just want to know who in the circle there at the command center knows you’ve been looking under stones.”

“Mike Gates, of course, Paul Thompson, and Eric Hunter. Dave Collins also was helpful, although in an unofficial capacity. Outside this immediate circle, as you called it, about half dozen analysts, Soviet specialists at Langley and Quantico.”

O’Brien was silent.

Lauren said, “Everything I’m telling you I’ll disavow if I have to. Eric Hunter was questioning me hard about your background. For some reason, you’re on his radar. I don’t know a lot about him. Deep CIA cover I suspect. He looks like he could hide bodies in places they’d never be found. It’s smart to tread around the guy.”

“Thanks, Lauren.” He disconnected and called Maggie Canfield and filled her in with what he knew. He added, “Maggie, remember I’d asked you about Eric Hunter? You said you didn’t know him. But apparently Jason does. I think Jason called this guy.”